Reality doesn’t matter, when it comes to UFOs?
Copyright 2018, InterAmerica, Inc.
I get the feeling that a few UFO buffs, including my
academic pal Bryan Sentes, think that the UFO phenomenon should be addressed
outside any rumination(s) about human reality, and that in discussions or
conjectures about UFOs, Occams [sic] Razor should be applied diligently.
It’s Ockham’s Razor, by the way. A lot of UFO writers keep
using the corrupt/perverse attribution Occam….
“William of Ockham
(circa 1287–1347) was an English Franciscan friar and theologian, an
influential medieval philosopher and a nominalist. His popular fame as a great
logician rests chiefly on the maxim attributed to him and known as Occam's
razor. The term razor refers to distinguishing between two hypotheses either by
"shaving away" unnecessary assumptions or cutting apart two similar
conclusions.” [Wikipedia]
I suggest that those of you who pretend to be intellectually
serious get Erich Auerbach’s monumental work Mimesis: The Representation
of Reality in Western Literature.
In it, you will find edifying insights about whom you should
be following in your approach to being astute about UFOs and everything else in
life, even if you only make it through the Introduction to the
Fiftieth-Anniversary Edition by the brilliant Edward W. Said.
In that Introduction you will find cautions (caveats) about
some who think that they have the whole of knowledge about things that should
impact or be imparted about UFOs and everything else that impinges on we who
are trying to fathom life or even something as irrelevant as the UFO
phenomenon.
Accepting the advice of Said and Auerbach, you’ll be able to
sift through various opinions and writings (mine included) to determine from
what perspective a writer is coming and how flawed or accurate they might be
according to their intellectual make up, if they have one.
So, reality. Does it matter what reality we find ourselves
in when it comes to UFOs?
Maybe, maybe not.
I think that we can pursue the reality of UFOs all by
itself, without the encumbrance of the philosophical approach to what is or
isn’t true in our experience.
Take the Christopher O’Brien project as a step toward
determining the make-up, the essence of the phenomenon as it appears in the
skies over Colorado.
That alone might provide major clues as to what has been and
is being seen overhead and known to the paranormal cognoscenti as UFOs.
Review the ideas of various ufologists who think that UFOs
are a phenomena that derives from EM emanations or the human id or unconscious
or even the outer limits of the cosmos or human imagination.
But first and foremost, know the “authors” of the ideas that
you are attempted to be seduced by: do they reflect the clear headedness of
someone who looks at a pure UFO event or are they someone who has been
influenced abjectly by persons who have muddied their own thinking by following
the lamentations about flying saucers or UFOs that have been foisted upon the
public by madmen?
There are several kinds of reality: the reality of mundane
life, the reality constructed by those who influence us, and the real reality,
which is the reality that I’ve suggested we use to seek an answer to lots of
our existence, with UFOs being a small part of that existence for some of us
obsessed by the phenomenon to the (sometimes) detriment of our daily lives.
Thus, I have to deplore the idea that reality is unimportant
in the study of UFOs, even as I recognize that UFOs are a trivial pursuit in
the great scheme of things.
RR
posted by RRRGroup at
Sunday, November 11, 2018
13 Comments:
I take you to address a number of topics. I try to get to the heart of the matter and save the pedantry and related commentary for the two notes at the end…
My response to your raising the issue of ufology and the Real was based on the assumption that something’s being real is basically thought of as something’s being independent of anyone’s thinking or perceiving it. Thus, for Plato and some mathematicians, numbers and their relations would exist even if human beings or some other intelligent creature never thought of them, whereas for Gauss (I think it was) atoms and molecules were only convenient fictions that enabled chemists to pursue their research. So, in the realm of ufology, Vallee would posit that UAPs are real, natural phenomena that exist independent of our thinking or perceiving them, while Zoam Chomsky maintains UFOs are not real (“There is no UFO phenomenon), being only misperceptions or lies. _But in either case all assume the same definition of the real_.
I’m in total agreement when you write “There are several kinds of reality: the reality of mundane life (what the phenomenologists call the Lebenswelt or Lifeworld), the reality constructed by those who influence us (socially, I’d call this ideology), and the ‘real’ reality… “ (roughly, the reality assumed, not unproblematically, by the sciences, as the realm of independently existing entities). But exactly how these, and other conceptions of the Real (Lacan’s? the postKantian? that of Speculative Realism, etc.?) might be said to enter the ufological discussion is a very gnarled, knotty matter, which is why I, from the start, advocated a pragmatic assumption of scientific realism, until said assumption prove problematic…
Pedantic Point [PP] #1: Occam’s Razor. ‘Occam’ and ‘Ockham’ are both acceptable versions of this name, William of Occam/Ockham.—You are correct that what is often posited as his Razor (e.g., “Theoretical entities ought not to be multiplied beyond necessity”) in fact does not appear in his writings (see section 4.1 for the entry “William of Ockham” in the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [SEP]). For my part, when I invoked Occam’s Razor in reference to Jose Caravaca’s External Agent, I did so in the name of theoretical parsimony or simplicity, and in this respect I am in good company: the SEP entry for “Simplicity” quotes Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Newton, Galileo, Lavoisier, and Einstein all stating in effect, to quote Einstein, “[T]he grand aim of all science…is to cover the greatest possible number of empirical facts by logical deductions from the smallest possible number of hypotheses or axioms.”
PP#2: It’s not ‘Mimesus’ but ‘Mimesis’, a notoriously difficult word to translate from the Ancient Greek, usually by the English ‘representation’, as in the subtitle of Auerbach’s great work, “The Representation of Reality in Western Literature.” It is, as the subtitle says, a study of the different ways various canonical works or writers (e.g., The Bible, The Odyssey, Dante, Flaubert, etc.) have presented the worlds they write about. As such, it’s more a branch of stylistics than of ontology, and how you take it to address how “you’ll be able to sift through various opinions and writings (mine included) to determine from what perspective a writer is coming and how flawed or accurate they might be according to their intellectual make up, if they have one” is quite beyond me…Moreover, the approach as such is outmoded: language-as-representation (as referring to a reality preceding and external to the text) is deeply problematic, and can generally be shown to be a self-deluded instance of language-as-allegory (language referring to other texts preceding and external to the text in question, rather sloppily termed “intertextuality” in the literature…).
By
Bryan Sentes, at Sunday, November 11, 2018
First off, thanks for catching my typo re: Mimesis.
As for your last paragraph, I was using Said's comments to mold my own, which go back to a position that what one is steeped in affects how they see reality and grotesques what the reality really was before it was ensconced in the material one accumulates during their lifetime of study.
That is, as Derrida mentions several times, as I've pointed out here (at this blog), one would do well to use the very first or original rendering of an account to find the truth of that account.
Said goes to great length to indicate how Auerbach deplored works in the Germanic oeuvre of various writers that distorted whatever reality they were wishing to address because of a temperament that was endemic to their cultural milieu.
What those elements of the milieu were that corrupted those writers' views of the events being recounted are many and varied, and you, surely, have access to them in Auerbach's book.
But that's not the import of my posting.
What I was trying to get at is the idea that the UFO reality, while not important in the long-view of humanity (as I see it), would be better served if the reality in which UFOs find themselves were treated without the corrupt mental acquisitions that affect those who write about them: Vallee, Zoam, you, me, everyone.
Auerbach's views about reality in the literary tradition, alongside the views of other thinkers (Freud, Jung, Foucault, Sagan, Keel, et al) can be applied to the problem of what UFOs are.
This has nothing to do with science, per se, although scientific methodology applies, as does the aberrant (to you, apparently) methodology that lies outside the scientific disciplines.
You gussy up the argument, which I love,as you know, but hoping to keep the UFO question outside the vast academic array of disciplines is not the way to go, I think.
Applying some of the techniques of (thinking) of philosophers, psychologists, occultists, neurologists, et cetera, et cetera would do well to explain (perhaps) what people think they are seeing.
It's the view outside Plato's cave.
My suggestions here are meant to stir the UFO laggards to think about UFOs in an out-of-box way that de Bone recommended with his structured approach to New Think, that all.
You would temper that, because you are swollen by the German Romantic tradition that Auerbach found wanting, supporting Vico's intellectual leaning instead.
RR
By
RRRGroup, at Sunday, November 11, 2018
You seem to be saying two, contradictory things: one the one hand, we should approach the UFO mystery “without …corrupt mental acquisitions” (which are what, exactly, for example?), while, on the other the views of various thinkers “can be applied to the problem”; on the one hand, I am guilty of approaching the problem with my “corrupt mental acquistions”, while, at the same time “hoping to keep the UFO question outside the vast academic array of disciplines.” I fail to see how “the techniques of (thinking) of philosophers, psychologists, occultists, neurologists” are _not_ just such “corrupt mental acquisitions.”
On the one hand, I thought maybe you are advocating Husserl’s revolutionary approach, asking that one perform a kind of _epoche_ (bracketing previous approaches to a problem or phenomenon) in the hope of accessing “the thing itself” (to paraphrase the master); while, on the other, you seem to advocate an interdisciplinary approach (not that the two, the phenomenological and the interdisciplinary, cannot prove complementary). (N.b., On the one hand, the success of phenomenology is, in a certain regard, indisputable: its revolutionalry repercussions were felt well past the middle of last century; on the other, the work of Derrida and Gadamer, to name two important figures, shows the inescapability of context and indeed how Vorurteilen (pre-judgements) are essential for the understanding of anything _as_ anything at all in the first place. It’s a complicated matter…).
So, given a view outside Plato’s Cave is not given to us mere mortals, are you asking we bracket how we’ve come at things hitherto for the sake of potential, new insights, or are you advocating for an interdisciplinary approach, or both?
By
Bryan Sentes, at Sunday, November 11, 2018
I'm open to every kind of approach that can be mustered to attack the UFO question.
But that effort has to be stimulated by persons unencumbered by a fixation on one or two mental (educational) proclivities.
Auerbach, if I'm reading him correctly -- and you will let me know if I am or not -- seemed disinclined to appreciate the kinds of thinking that you prefer, the Germanic tradition exemplified by Kant and those who like his train of thought.
Ockham's Razor, for example, may not be appropriate for the UFO resolution, which may require inquiry that and answers that are more than simple....the UFO explanation may be rather complex, requiring a plethora of thought that lies within acceptable, "normal" thought -- like yours -- but coupled with fringe thought that is either so loopy as to appear mad or "new thought" which is unique, new.
The Distortion Theory of Jose Caravaca has precedents of various kinds, which may lead him to conjure further with his ideas.
But there may be a far-out explanation that has nothing to do with Jose's theory or those who've offered similar thinking.
The problem, as I see it, lies in the less than fecund thinking overwhelming the UFO question (ufology).
Presenting the UFO question inside some of the academic disciplines you thrive on could bring forth persons to address the UFO problem, persons who wouldn't touch the matter with a ten foot pole.
Discussing reality might open the door for inclusion of UFOs, if one can make the case that UFOs are integral to an understanding of the reality in which we find ourselves.
And to get to that point or possibility requires that those writing about and thinking about the UFO question be open to all kinds of thought, not just the Germanic Romantic or Western European clot of thought....which I prefer myself, as you know.
Moreover, the ideas of physicists, today (and earlier) have to be a sine qua non of the discussion, and not just in the Ockhamian sense.
Interdisciplinary approach? Yes, in all its manifestations and a free-for-all approach, circumscribed by rational thought, examples, internet links, and bonhomie.
RR
By
RRRGroup, at Sunday, November 11, 2018
I wonder if what you're saying here amounts to much more than that old chestnut: "If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." For Menzel, e.g., an atmospheric physicist (I think) every UFO report was a misidentification of unusual atmospheric phenomena. Is it this kind of narrowed problem-solving approach you're criticizing?
But, then, even as much as Jung tried to corral the phenomenon into the terms of his analytic psychology, at every point he was careful to admit it could very well be something else or much more.
RE: Occam's Razor: IF the problem is to be solved scientifically, there is no escaping the demands of theoretical parsimony, or Occam's Razor in that sense. Theories that adhere to the principle of such simplicity aren't necessarily uncomplex or mind-boggling, mind you: they're only formulated not to be UNnecessarily complex....
RE Auerbach: he was a member of a much respected if now passé generation of Romance philologists (including Curtius and Spitzer); I don't know his opinion of the Jena Romantics; he may very well have eschewed the NeoKantianism of his day, but that is a different kettle of fish.
But, sure, scrupulously avoiding dogmatic thinking is surely to be practiced...
By
Bryan Sentes, at Monday, November 12, 2018
You remain pedantic and somewhat(!) philosophical through and through.
Menzel!? You jest.
I just say "Open the doors to rational speculation, wide, and give friar Ockham a rest."
RR
By
RRRGroup, at Monday, November 12, 2018
On the 'reality' question - and whilst I'm fully aware of Rich's thoughts on 'hallucinogens' - here's a VERY interesting bit of research suggesting psilocybin compounds far from 'distorting' everyday reality, actually switch on a completely separate, yet coherent neural network of perception which gives a completely different 'decentred/non-egocentric' take on what is being perceived & one's perceived place within it, which is no less valid than the brain's ordinary, everyday 'default mode network' take on 'reality'.
Perhaps this separate network of perception is triggered by Jose's 'external agent(s)'?
https://qz.com/1196408/scientists-studying-psilocybin-accidentally-proved-the-self-is-an-illusion/
By
DrDee, at Wednesday, November 14, 2018
With the aid of various technologies & 'higher' mathematics we may well be able to postulate the existence of a 'greater' reality far beyond the narrow confines of our own linguistic, cultural & mental constructs. However our immediate human perception of 'reality' in & of the moment of an anomalous experience/encounter is obviously defined & constrained by these inherent mental 'models'.
By
DrDee, at Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Oh and here's some more 'deluded' witnesses for Zoam to denounce & decry with link to audio from 17:50 to 20:00.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24849/listen-as-multiple-airline-pilots-report-very-high-speed-unidentified-objects-over-ireland
By
DrDee, at Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Knowing that we were approaching a meteor shower maximum, when I heard the report I thought "meteor." And of course expert observers in Northern Ireland and Scotland reported seeing a bright meteor at exactly the time and matching the trajectory as that of the "UFO" report.
I could invoke the Doppelganger "UFO" principle and say that the "UFO" reporters should have seen the meteor as well as the "UFO" to make a solid case but there's no reason for overkill. It's just a matter of good sense: ordinary people see things they fail to identify and inside the culturally supplied "UFO" delusion they call a common and wholly inconsequential meteor a "UFO."
Everybody's happy now the bad thing's gone away.
By
zoamchomsky, at Wednesday, November 21, 2018
off-topic a bit (initially), but for anyone not familiar with the Father Gill case, this link offers a well-reasoned yet only barely plausible solution for the encounter, in much the same way that UFOlogists here have tried to explain Socorro with weak (to me) solutions.
http://magonia.haaan.com/2009/gillagain/
Bringing it back to the topic at hand: if as Jose believes, these extreme UFO events are brief intrusions into our reality (although the Gill case involved *hours* of interaction), they seem 'designed' with ready explanations at hand (hoax, top-secret craft), thereby putting the 'intrusion into our reality' idea way down the list (or off it entirely, till now). It seems too coincidental that there's always a 'decent' explanation to be offered up that relieves us from having to think uncomfortable thoughts. 1959 for the Gill case, it lasted hours, yet nobody had a camera - I guess that could be assumed to be the case on Papua New Guinea? Socorro, a well-populated, First World city - and a *much* shorter encounter - certainly a higher probability that someone would have a camera. If the two realities can never intermingle to the extent that 'our' reality can actually capture an event emanating from another reality, then it's a certainty that no UFO is ever going to land on the White House Lawn.
By
jamesrav, at Wednesday, November 21, 2018
As they say in New York: "I'm not sayin, I'm just sayin."
Those floating lights offshore? Squid boats.
"If you didn’t already know it, those unidentified floating objects that have dotted the horizon with bright floodlights on some recent nights are commercial fishing vessels that use the lights to lure squid to the surface."
https://www.ocregister.com/2012/11/13/those-floating-lights-offshore-squid-boats/
By
zoamchomsky, at Saturday, November 24, 2018
And now, speaking from experience, I have seen very similar squid boats within a hundred yards of the cliffs of San Pedro, Palos Verdes, California. And they are indeed a curious sight: glaring bright lights directed into the ocean but only barely illuminating the boat and crew.
That they appear to be more distant and floating to those who don't know what they're seeing is completely understandable.
There's no reason to think "flying saucers" or any other extraordinary stimuli or even consider Eddie or Phil's denials. They were just squid boats with lights.
Marty's reign as master advocate for the PSH of "UFO" reports remains unblemished.
By
zoamchomsky, at Saturday, November 24, 2018
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